Biography
Mònica Armengol is a high school art teacher. She received her Masters of Fine Arts Degree from the Jean Jaurès University, France. She was granted with a Fulbright Study of the United States Institutes (SUSI). She completed her academic studies in scenography at the Institut del Teatre in Barcelona, Spain, before moving back to Andorra to create the Escola d’Art d’Ordino, the first municipal art school where she worked as a director and fine arts teacher for 3 years.
She created the scenography for theater productions and participated to the PQ (Prague Quadrennial) with a fire performance. This experience influenced her art work which consists mostly of theatrical installations made of paper, color and light, specially designed for the site.
She participated in artist residency programs. The first was « Andorra Tallers d’Art ». For her last residency, she was invited to participate in the « Art Camp, Colors per al Planeta » an international art and culture exchange held in Andorra and commissioned by UNESCO and the Andorran Government. She recently participated in the 1st international biannual Andorra Land Art 2015. Her practice, paintings, installations, engraving, is defined by the color experimentation and public interaction.
Recently solo exhibitions took place at the La Llacuna cultural center, in Andorra and at L’aparador Gallery, in La Seu d’Urgell, Spain. Recent group exhibitions include «Chrysalis, the symbol of transformation», Primo piano Livin’Gallery, Italy; “voeux d’artistes”, Marseille, France; «Exilis» artist book, Capmany, Girona and Barcelona; and «Moya Annuale» 2013 and 2014, Moya Museum of Young art, Vienna, who owns one of her pieces in the permanent collection.
She currently lives and works in Andorra.
Direct speech: “Influenced by “action” paintings, I define my practice as research about color and its expressive potentiality. I tend to define it as tincturing even if it is not quite properly the technique employed. I apply colorants material on a piece of fabric or paper in such a way that the color appears as a tinctured material and not as an applied or smeared coat.
I usually I impregnate paper with liquid colour giving an uppermost importance to gesture and expression on the support. The need for structure coexists with the need for randomness and spontaneity, so the outcome is a sort of balance.
In my paintings, the process of making ends with fragmenting and composing together pieces of paper into a larger design. A new pattern is built up with different paper shapes previously painted. Collage appears as a regulation of matter and color. The patch and the line, seen individually take a different significance when observed globally or in detail. When seen at a close range, the material make the details difficult to recognize but when seen at the distance, the pattern is identifiable thanks to the reading of some cultural, intuitive and interpretative signs.
In the installations, the inner structure, usually in wood, take the regulatory role. Light, shadows and color work together to create a new space perception. I intend to occupy a space, appropriate it to create a new physic and visual space”.
Direct contacts of Mònica Armengol: tel. +376 329 537; email: [email protected]
